Few franchises have such deep and strong roots as The Legend of Zelda. Ever since its first appearance in the NES it has been a standard in quality and interesting gameplay (except, of course, for some exceptions, you know what I mean). As E3 is now fading from our discussions and minds, the series has gotten new attention, accentuated by the long awaited Sequelitis episode that recently was uploaded in Youtube. On one hand we have an avid and quite perceptive gamer arguing the loss of exploration, the sense of awe and wonder as the series has progressed, on the other we have an explicit promise by the developers in Nintendo that the world will turn into an open world experience.

Exploring is usually synonymous to Zelda. The idea of finding a secret was always one of the thing we took for granted when playing the games. But then Egoraptor reminds us that it is not always what it seems. Specially the streamlining of dungeons shows us how using a basic structure we can eliminate the excitement of discovery in a game. I think this was one of the most interesting points made in his comment: instead of letting us wonder what to do with x item, we know it will be there to kill the corresponding boss of the dungeon. I have always been more a 2-D Zelda player, and this problem is part of even the best of those handheld games. The Oracle of Seasons/Ages, for example, are specially faulty in this regard (I still love them, though).

Then came A Link Between Worlds. Apart from this being the game that made me buy a 2DS, I pretty much thought the game had a nifty twist, part of which I already discussed in a previous article. The idea of the already looted items, all taken from their respective dungeons, eliminated the enslavement of the player to the dungeon-specific item. Only the first three dungeons require a specific item, which you can rent for a moment. So why have all those other items then? Well, they serve to explore the world. If you noticed, a common complaint of some reviewers (one example here) is that the game was short, easy to finish. I feel this was on purpose. The dungeons themselves were short, easy to finish in less than half an hour. This had two functions: first to keep the game handheld friendly, since nobody wants to interrupt a dungeon and restart it later, since handheld’s focus has always been to quickly play and to be able to stop at any moment. But the second main objective of short dungeons was to make the player explore the world, instead of focusing only on the cave you had to get to. I think that fact was missed by many gamers, who were so used to the usual “Zelda Formula”, that they forgot that there was life under the sun of Hyrule/Lorule. A completionist would see it all, but a regular gamer such as myself could have missed the heightened exploration factor of the game. And it gets even worse when suddenly you are dropped in a new world and you have eight lairs to get to, but you have not the usual numbers or limitations as in A Link to the Past and forward. I personally loved it: I was now free to skip the dungeon with the guards entirely, so I could do, what is to me, the busy work until the last. I loved the freedom, and more Zelda games should strive to this end.

There is still the question on how guided a game should be. I can agree that the latest Zeldas have this issue, in which they block your path until you get x item, and also tell you to do this first and then that, much like a chore. But then there is the issue of conveyance, something Egoraptor himself discusses at one point. My biggest gripe with the two NES Zeldas and why I think they don’t hold up anymore is that they don’t guide you, they are way to cryptic. A little guidance is necessary to know what is happening. Exploration should not be limited by too much hand holding, but at the same time it should not be too free, since this confuses the player more than making the game enjoyable. Again, A Link Between Worlds does this masterfully: yes, here are your eight dungeons, however, you have no order and you are free to explore each section as you like.

That’s where I think A Link to the Past and A Link Between Worlds represent the main theme of Zelda perfectly. Maybe in the first game you have a few numbers of the map, but they are for the most part open, and you can progress at your pace. There is no need to get a letter of play a song to make someone happy to progress. The latter one even omits numbers and almost every limitation, giving you the chance to really look into the “overworld” and sometimes even forget the main quest.

I think this is the kind of exploration most of us would like. Not hand holding, but neither total freedom and a loss of sense of direction. Some guidance is necessary, but not too restrictive as to keep you technically on a straight path with a little fork at the end, as Ocarina of Time did.

These are, at least, my two cents on this rich discussion that has erupted. I think there is much to be expected from the new game that will come up, specially on this new focus of letting the player regain control over his action and let him do what games best let us do: to determine our own actions and to live with the decisions made in game.

I love The Legend of Zelda. I may not have played each one of its iterations, I may not have completed them all 100%. But every time I have a second on my busy life, I just play them. I enjoy the mechanics, the bosses and sometimes even the silly stories. Heck, I even bought a 2DS just to play the most recent title, A Link Between Worlds.

How has it fared for me? In my opinion it was fantastic. In some friends’ opinion it was just a “meh”. But here I am a bit more biased, not because of my fandom, since my friends are fans too, but due to my attention to the story. Because the designers, inadvertently or not, have included an interesting facet into the game mechanics.

I once complained about the fact that in many sequels, the super powered player by some unexplained chance had become dwarfed, losing all the items he had at disposition, as well as power-ups and other neat stuff. In TLoZ this was often avoided by creating so called “sequels” where the hero was a reborn form of some ancestor. Thus a loophole was averted effectively. Not a big one, but a nitpick nonetheless.

When I heard that LBW was a sequel to probably the best Zelda ever, I was a bit dubious about how it would work out. But the world was familiar, but different, which I took much enjoyment in.

There was the issue of the items, which were technically all at disposition since the beginning of the game. Many found that a bit off putting, but for me it was a great stroke of genius. It was not the game mechanic that fascinated me here, but the “meta-history” behind this concept.

But what is meta history? Unlike meta story, which is technically a secondary story that runs in the background of a game to set the tone and the mood of the general game, meta-history refers to the history that runs from one sequel to another, as in how the change across the years/decades/centuries run by in the fictional game world or even the history that affects how we can relate to the game/work of fiction. There are many examples of this in fiction.

Let’s take, for example Tolkien’s books to explain the concept. The Hobbit as we know it today is not the original version. The 1937 edition told the chapter of “Riddles in the Dark” totally different: Gollum offered the Ring as a gift and, upon discovering that Bilbo already had it, offered him to guide him out of the mountain. When the author took the time to make the sequel, he had to create link to the Lord of the Rings. He decided to make the Ring that link and rewrote the story to match, more or less, the moods.

How did he excuse this change? He simply determined that the first version was old corrupted Bilbo’s point of view. Frodo wrote the second, more “correct”, version after the events of Lord of the Rings. That Red Book was taken to Gondor, while Bilbo’s Red Book stayed safely in Rivendell. In other words, there were two versions in different libraries, and all Tolkien did was translate those books, discovering two points of view on the same story, as it happens with many historic events. Thus we have now two editions, the old one being Bilbo’s book and the new one being Frodo’s.

This is a prime example of meta-history. When there was something that contradicted in the editions of the books, instead of accepting it as a mistake, the author invented a historical reason within the framework of his fictitious world for the apparent mistake, integrating them thus in a much more creative evolution of the books and giving them a fake history.

How does the new Zelda accomplish this? The Hyrule we play at in LBW is the same as the one in Link to the Past. This means that the previous Link, who lived centuries ago, had already looted the dungeons, thus rendering them empty of legendary artifacts. The fact that Ravio has all the items in his possession could thus mean (this is purely conjectural) that he bought them all from collectors or found them in ancient graves and other places outside the dungeons. Granted, some objects, like the blue suit, are still in dungeons, but they are in another dimension, which does not contradict the idea of the emptied dungeons.

In other words, there is a historic reason for the new mechanic. I don’t know if the designers at Nintendo did it on purpose, but the mere idea that the treasure was now obtainable without the need to enter a dungeon was incredible. I liked the game because of this. Now all I had to do was to rent/buy the items from a greedy salesman and I felt there had been really a previous Link who had taken out all treasures and inherited (or maybe even sold) them to other people.

This is a minor detail in the grand total of a great game, but definitely one that gives more life to the fictional world provided. This again shifted the whole idea on how you approach dungeons, making thus Dark Hyrule even more open ended, since we did not need to scavenge for the treasure anymore.

Now that specific Hyrule had an history, and now the sequel felt even more like one. It is just that little detail, the meta-historic detail, that gives us a deeper world to explore and imagine – had this particular thing been on purpose or not.

The Legend of Zelda is one of the greatest franchises ever created. Nintendo, when re-building the gaming industry after the crash of the 80s, really produced hit after hit. You can demonstrate it by just observing how many of these games are lately turning 25 years: Metal Gear, Mario Bros., Metroid… definitely I would dare to call the NES-era one of the golden times of videogaming.

Specially Zelda holds a dear place in our hearts. How many times, after all, did we go ahead and save her? Across the wide lands of Hyrule and other kingdoms, time and even universes our hero link has restlessly picked up item after item to rid the world of evil and, more specifically, Ganondorf (although not always).

I may have not played every game, but I am definitely enthralled by every new one that comes out. Twilight Princess is the only reason I am planning to buy a Wii!

But then there is the other side to this fandom. During years the community, loyal to their Zelda games, have been discussing the order of the games in a timeline that would sound as convincing as possible. Multiple videos have come out in response, and many more articles joined to discuss such a matter. It has come up to ending friendships!

Recently, while browsing my usual favourite game reviews and bits of information I stumbled across the last episode of Clearing the Confusion, a very interesting series in which NecroVMX gives us an outline on sequels and storylines of the different most popular games ever released, no matter if it was in Japan or the world. This particular episode one was dedicated to the game we are about to tackle… or to be more specific, the fandom around it.

The video is 30 minutes long and definitely worth a watch. At the end he basically gives his opinion on the whole “creating a timeline” issue that has plagued the Zelda fans for years. In a nutshell he beseeches the community to just enjoy the games and leave the timeline the way Nintendo envisioned it when they released the most recent installment, Skyward Sword. Now, even though I like the idea of just enjoying the games, as they were intended to be used, I can not share the criticism towards the fans of the series.

In an alternative, much earlier review, AVGN also had a few words on this particular expression of fandom. For him it was a sign of the passion that many gamers displayed towards their favourite series. Despite all the swearing he usually does, I must agree on that. Enjoying the game goes much times beyond just sitting in front of the T.V. and pressing the right buttons. It is about, and specially in this day and age, to share the experiences with others, to discuss the game and to expand it beyond its limits.

I must be honest, until I saw the AVGNs review, I had never thought that there should be a timeline for the Zelda games. And even now I am reluctant to even think of that. For me every story has its own unique take on almost the same legend, unless it is explicitly a sequel to a previous game (like it happens in Zelda 2). I always thought it would be too bothersome to try to find some coherence from game to game. But some fans did. And I do not criticize them for that. It is great for them to take the work and to do this. It is in their freedom to try to figure this out, however useless it may be. It is, after all, their way of experiencing the game.

What I do not condole is that the passions just get out of hand. In other words, I do not agree with ending friendships over such a detail. This effort of putting the games in a timeline is just a way to express fandom. I never ever fought my friends when we tried to explaining a detail on an orc’s way of life. Sure, we would debate heatedly, but at the end we would just nod and agree that the discussion was useless… and thus fun. In other words, the discussion should never affect a real life. Because that is what really should underline the criticism towards fandom.

I am not a fanboy in the sense that everything I see about my music, games or books drives me nuts. As a historian myself I have learned that going to the extremes just provokes more trouble than it is worth anything. Discussion, no matter what levels they are on, should always reach a healthy quota. If you can not understand the other person, then why bother? We are not defining the destiny of humanity itself!

In any case, the accusations made by NecroVMX, whether intended or not, are not really ideal. I understand what he’s trying to say, since some fanboys exaggerate a lot and one as a gamer can get fed up by it. But we can not condemn a whole fandom just because of some bad apples!

May they smile upon your way!

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Welcome to a blog of gaming, movies, books and some history. In here I explore the stories that have carried us over decades, yes, even centuries, to what defines us today. I hope you enjoy it and comment, I am always open to respond!
This blog is updated whenever possible, once a week.